Monday, 20 June 2016

HBO apologizes for HBO Now not being available during Game of Thrones

Last night, HBO aired one of the biggest Game of Thrones episodes ever. It was so big, that Polygon's Ben Kuchera said it made up for just about every disappointing moment that's occurred in the series over the course of the past six seasons. It was comparable to the momentous Red Wedding episode that aired during the show's third season, which saw the death of everyone's favorite character to hate, King Joffrey.

Those using cable boxes and streaming the show directly through said boxes would have been able to watch the show no problem. For those hoping to catch it using HBO's streaming service, HBO Now, luck was not on their side. HBO Now users noticed that the service was down just as Game of Thrones was starting and weren't able to access it again until a good ten minutes after the episode had finished.

HBO apologized on Twitter for the outage, citing an overload of the network from subscribers as the reason the service failed in the first place. This isn't the first time, however, that HBO has had to apologize for its service not being available during a popular show. Two years ago, HBO Now was down for the majority of True Detective'sseason finale. In the past, Game of Thrones fans have also complained about HBO Now being slow, choppy or simply inaccessible during episodes of the series, too.

HBO hasn't indicated whether it is going to look into building more servers to host the large amount of people that want to watch peak episodes, like last night's Game of Thrones, but Polygon has reached out for comment.